An early whiff of Becklash hangs in the air

The more people you talk to here in Los Angeles, the more Sisyphean David Beckham's task begins to look. Last night, a TV soccer presenter told me that during the Under-20 World Cup, currently being played in Canada, the US games have been screened on ESPNU, a niche spin-off channel from the main sports network, which typically shows college games and the like.

When the national side reached the quarter-finals, and following an email petition from fans, the talkboards were abuzz with excited rumours that the game would be screened on the ESPN channel proper, a move that would signify the sport was being taken slightly more seriously. Alas, those tuning in on the day were to be disappointed, as the channel had decided not to bump their scheduled event out of the way. The scheduled event was a Rock Paper Scissors tournament.

Were that not a sobering enough perspective, there is a distinct whiff of backlash here in the Los Angeles smog, and this before the Galaxy's star signing has even made his debut. They haven't called it a Becklash yet, but that might just be a matter of time.

Indeed, the Beckhams' reception makes one wonder if even expat Brits are doomed to be judged by the standards of their countrymen. Although America has traditionally been seen as the country where success is celebrated enthusiastically and unabashedly, we Brits have always been accused of tall poppy syndrome, the build-'em-up-to-knock-'em-down tendency about which high achievers love to complain.

Yet here, in the land that gave us celebrity culture, it is the latter rather than the former that currently prevails as far as the Beckhams are concerned. Having endured as near to saturation coverage of the couple's arrival as you'll ever get in a town where there are one or two other famous residents, the natives seem restless. Consider the reviews of Victoria's TV documentary, which aired on the NBC network on Monday night. You'd struggle to describe them as mixed.

"It is an orgy of self-indulgence so out of whack with reality that you will sit there slack-jawed at the gall of these people who think we are that stupid."

Thus spake Linda Stasi of the New York Post, who neglects to acknowledge that this is nonetheless a country currently glued in its manifold millions to The Singing Bee, a karaoke show so spectacularly moronic that you'd swear it must presage some kind of imminent species meltdown. Just as there are on our own sceptred isle, there are large sections of the American viewing public who aren't going to trouble any Brains Trust meetings.

But Ms Stasi is right to identify a hint of ennui. A few years ago, someone in Britain did a roaring trade in T-shirts bearing the slogan "Bored of the Beckhams". Needless to say, Victoria was eventually snapped wearing one, and she may want to think about taking it out of mothballs as a means of telegraphing a certain wry self-awareness to as-yet unpersuaded Americans.

And heaven knows, if his ankle injury persists, she'll need stunts like that to fill whatever they call the Brand Beckham version of New Labour's news grid. For all the choreographed blitzkrieg of the past week, the problem flaring up again shows how easily the best laid plans of mice and Simon Fuller can go awry. Fuller is, of course, the Svengali who masterminded Beckham's move to the US, and though his crack publicist army is currently engaged in house-to-house fighting for the attention of Los Angeles residents, its job will become significantly harder if his debut has to be postponed until after the first flush of hard-won interest has died away.

Right now, the Beckham injury story is running right down the very bottom of ESPN's news bulletins - which you might view as an inroad of sorts - and he has insisted he feels no pressure to be some messiah every game. But with the Galaxy planning to work him to the bone with lucrative Asian tours and the like, their prize steer's fitness is becoming an economic and public relations necessity.

As for the sports channels, the medium for the message ... well, ESPN has announced that it will have 19 cameras tracking him during Saturday's match against Chelsea. For a network that has already branded Victoria's documentary "the single most pointless TV show of all time", you get the feeling that its patience will wear thin pretty quickly each time all that hardware is pointed at a glum-looking bloke watching from the stands.